THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

On Tuesday's BBC World Service programme The Strand, I discussed The Girl Who Played With Fire, which was released in Britain yesterday. You can hear that on BBC I Player here, for a couple of more days, it's the lead item in the running order. Here's a fuller take on the film:

The second Swedish film adapted from Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels is very different from the first, a more complicated yet less layered movie, with a number of impressive set-pieces and an even more impressive performance by Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander. More complicated but less layered may sound an oxymoron, so let me explain.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was scripted by a pair of extremely talented Danish feature film makers, Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, and directed by another Dane, Niels Arden Oplev. They trimmed down the book considerably, particularly cutting back on Mikke Blomqvist's romances, to focus on his relationship with Lisbeth Salander. This had the effect of simplifying the story, making it more of a thriller, but it worked and kept a huge book manageable on film. When I saw the preview of that film, John Landis was sitting by me, and afterwards he exclaimed 'it's like an episode of Columbo', which says as much about his sensitivity to nuance as to plot arc, but in a way he was right. Take away the stuff about Swedish society, Nazi connections, abuse of women, and serial killers and it is more like a Columbo plot, though it was made so well, shot so subtly, it was hard to make the connection visually.

But The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second installment of the trilogy, allows that sort of connection to be made more easily. The films are being shot with Swedish and German television in mind, and this one was made by a director (Daniel Alfredsson) who, though he has made features, was also head of drama at SVT as well as a proflific and good television director, and scripted by Jonas Frykberg, whose career has mainly been in TV. This is not a question of quality as much as scale; this film seems scaled far more for the small screen than the first one. On The Strand I used the example of advocat Bjurman's summer house, where he has hidden Salander's files. Both times we see it, although the viewer should know what it is, Alfredsson makes sure to pull back to show the mailbox at the entrance to the driveway, the kind of establishing shorthand we expect on TV.

But the real difference between the two films is in the scripting, because this one remains very faithful to the novel, which has good and bad points. The bad is that, as with the first volume, the book is very densely plotted, and its characters are given lots of back story and time to develop. The result is that a number of times in this film, the characters have to explain things to each other, that is, to us, the audience. Certain interesting characters, like the detective Bublanski, or Salander's old boss Armanskij, don't get a chance to be developed here, while others, like Blomkvist's sister, are introduced with no explanation (we see her Italian in-laws, but don't learn she's a leading criminal lawyer--that presumably has been left for the third installment). There is also more romance in this one, we not only get a somewhat gratuitous but otherwise rewarding lesbian love scene with Rapace and Yasmin Garbi, but we see Blomkvist's relationship with his editor, Erika, not only when they are in bed but when he tells his in-laws he's in love with a married woman. That the excellent Lena Endre gets more space as Erika is another positive, though her role seems to be much like hers in the Swedish Wallander series, to act as a brake on the main male character. Interestingly, both she and Michael Nykvist are a bit older than the book's characters; Nykvist's Blomkvist is played with belly extended to make the point he's not a natural ladies' man.

There is also space for Per Oscarsson to deliver a fine performance as the stroke-ridden Palmgren, Salander's original guardian, and Peter Andersson is suitably slimy as Bjurman. Paolo Roberto, playing himself, is quite good, though I'm not sure we actually needed a car chase, except to re-establish this as a TV movie, but the difficulty with the character of Niederman, with his inability to feel pain, makes it difficult, and Micke Spreitz with his dyed hair reminded me of Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love (which, interestingly, is also the title of Mia's book about the imported sex trade), if not Ivan Drago from Rocky whatever number it was.

It is also odd how small anomalies stand out in the continuity. I didn't go back to the book to check, but did Miriam Wu really carry Salander's birthday present around in her purse for a full
year on the off-chance she might show up again? When Salander beats up the two motorcycle gang guys, and rides off on one of their bikes, where did she find a helmet that fits her? Neither biker wore one, nor were they carrying one (though I seem to recall in the book they might have been for a girlfriend). And a plot revolving around a key dropped by a woman who makes few mistakes of panic does stretch things a bit.

Those who have read the books will find this film touches all the bases. For those who haven't, it may be a bit hard to follow, but many of them will be presumed to have seen the first installment, which would make things a bit easier. But the selling point of this second film is Noomi Rapace. The scene where she dons face paint to frighten the journalist who's been linked to the sex trade is a bravura set-piece for her, and, much as the first film was Blomkvist's, with Salander coming to the rescue, this one is hers, with Blomkvist doing the same. That they play only one scene together makes that point even clearer.

The Girl Who Played With Fire is very good television, and it's an entertaining film, if not as impressive as its predecessor. And though Rooney Mara may come from American football royalty (her father's family owns the New York Giants and her mother's the Pittsburgh Steelers) she will have her work cut out trying to match Noomi Rapace's performance. I'll suggest my take on what the American version may be like sometime in the future (hint: Daniel Craig doesn't write for a small left-wing magazine, but for the Wall Street Journal).

STIEG LARSSON'S GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST

Although Stieg Larsson's Millenium series was projected for ten books (like Maj Sjowall's and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck series) this, the third and final novel which he turned in to his publishers, actually completes a very coherent and self-contained trilogy, as the battle between Lisbeth Salander and her oppressors, powerful men in Swedish society, reaches a courtroom climax. In a sense, that climax defines this novel: where the first two books involved quite a bit of action (the first using the familiar story of finding the bad apple in the family in a new and interesting way, the second pitting Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist against her immediate tormentors) the default setting for this book is the conference room. Even the trial takes place around a table, rather than a Perry Mason-style courtroom setting, but I cannot think of a crime novel which proceeds from one meeting to another quite the way this one does--the Millenium magazine editorial staff; the villains in the secret section with Sapo, the state security police; the editorial staff and the board of SMP, the paper Ericka Berger leaves Millenium to edit; the police; the government, and so on.

The cumulative effect of all these meetings is an awful lot of exposition, not just of the plot but also of the history of the Swedish security state. That Larsson manages to make the suspense riveting in the face of such iintense backgrounding is a tribute to the story. But this will not suit the tastes of all readers, even those who have enjoyed the previous two volumes, and certainly it would not be a good place to begin. But if you're a fan of conspiracy novels you're likely to enjoy it, particularly as you see all these good stories which no one has (yet) bothered to fictionalise. It is a tribute to Larsson that he manages to make the story as gripping as he does, because what he does is manipulate groups, rather than people, through this plot. I compared him in an earlier essay (you can link to it here) to Alexandre Dumas, but here the model I have in mind is more like Richard North Patterson, or Michael Crichton, where the thriller plot revolves around an issue, and a lot of explication is required, and indeed, becomes part of the plot. Thus Salander herself can spend most of the book offstage, as it were, in a hospital bed from which she manipulates her hackers.

Oddly, what makes the novel work is the group of villains. The beauty of the plot is that he keeps them, seemingly, one step ahead of his heroes, even when we know that they cannot be. There still seems to be an inevitability that they, with their power and secrecy, will triumph. Thus when the most pompous and seld-assured of them is brought down to size, there is a palpable feeling of success. Perhaps the weakest part of the story is the assumption that there are enough decent, honest Swedes, not just in the police, but also in the government, in the secret police itself, and in the judiciary, to let the heroes triumph. This seems a strangely Swedish conceit: after all, Larsson's balances his nobel journalist heroes with any number of lazy or corrupt ones. It seems about as likely as so many women finding Blomkvist irresisitible! Blomkvist's fatal attraction to so many women is beginning to wear thin; although his new squeeze is interesting, one can see Larsson perhaps thinking ahead. I mistakenly felt a number of characters, and even settings, introduced in the second novel would appear again here. They don't but one gets the sense that Larsson was playing the long game, for the ten-book set. For example, the character of Linder, from Milton Security, would seem primed for a bigger role the next time Millenium, or Berger, got into trouble.

Thus the lack of focus, the relatively smaller roles for Blomkvist and Salander are not that surprising. In a sort of coda that seems almost rushed at the end, Salander returns to action, but it is interesting that silence is always her strongest point, and her character can grow in depth while saying nothing. In fact, Salander reminds me that Sweden has recently produced a couple of key works in the modern vampire cycle, and she would not be out of place in either Frostbitten or Let The Right One In. Still, she creates an anomaly of sorts. As Blomkvist himself explains, 'the story is not primarily about spies and secret agencies: its about violence against women and the men who enable it'. But that's not quite true.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was called, in Swedish, Men Who Hate Women, and it was a novel about just that, including the men who hate Salander, who are counterpointed to the serial killer (who turns out to be carrying on a family tradition of abuse that includes both girls and boys). The parallel storylines, reflecting each other, are what makes this is the strongest of the series. The Girl Who Played With Fire is focused much more on Salander's own revenges. But the Swedish title for this third volume was, as best I can translate it, Castles In The Air Exploded. To me this suggests the crumbling of the ideals of Swedish society, and the English title suggests striking against the stings of society, not just the males who abuse women. Thus Larsson's title signifies the nature of this novel better than Blomkvist's PC explanation--it is above all a conspiracy fiction, and it will be a conspiracy film when it is finally brought to the screen. I enjoyed it, but I felt a let-down after the first two, and that let-down wasn't helped, as I said, by the action-filled coda, clever though it was. Still, when one plows through a 600 page novel, one does it for a reason. And now, with nowhere left for Millenium to go, we can only mourn, one last time, Larsson's passing.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
by Stieg Larsson
Maclehose Press/Quercus£18.99 ISBN 9781906694166
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NOTE: This review will also appear at www.crimetime.co.uk

STIEG LARSSON'S THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

Following on from my appearance on Open Book to discuss Scandinavian crime writers, as posted here, this review was written for Crime Time, and is already on its website, here.

This is the second of Larsson's posthumously-published epic Millennium trilogy, and near its end the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, while searching the secret apartment kept by Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous girl, realises that she was 'the woman who hated men who hated women'. This epiphany is actually a very specific reference, which would be recognised by Swedish readers, to the title of the trilogy's first book, but was lost when it was retitled in English as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The new title was admittedly more attractive, and the best-selling success of the book certainly proved the point, but the reference was a sign of the fine balance which Larsson constructed between his two main characters, Blomkvist and Salander, and, more importantly, the way he constructed the trilogy, so concerns hinted at in the first book become magnified and play into both the plotting of the second, and into our understanding of Salander herself.

The book brings Salander to the fore. When it opens she has left Sweden, cutting herself off from Blomkvist, and despite her return home, albeit to an existence under all radar, the book turns quickly to Blomkvist's radical magazine Millennium. They have decided to publish an expose of Sweden's trafficking of young women, and the involvement of prominent Swedes in it. But when the journalist writing the piece, and his wife, whose doctoral dissertation has provided its core, are murdered, Salander becomes the prime suspect, in part because her legal guardian, and abuser, with whom she dealt in the first book, is killed with the same weapon. Salander becomes the object of a nationwide manhunt, and Blomkvist, trusting her innocence, begins his own investigation. Blomkvist's and Salander's stories remain separate; in fact, Blomkvist tells a good portion of the tale twice, from each character's point of view. Rather than being redundant, it is exceptionally effective, because there are always angles we cannot see where Salander is concerned, and we are just as befuddled as Blomkvist by her.

Larsson has created an interesting trope on the most popular style of Swedish crime books, that established by Sjowall and Wahloo's Martin Beck and taken on by Mankell's Wallender. These books are valued for their perceptions about Swedish society, and their depressive cops are always about to be overwhelmed by the seamy realities underneath what is supposed to be a state devised rationally for the benefit of all citizens. Larsson's Blomkvist is more of a Per Wahloo figure (as a left-wing journalist) than a Martin Beck; Blomkvist is a socially well-adjusted journalist committed to righting the wrongs he investigates within that society, where Salander is, on the surface, exactly the kind of person with whom Swedish society cannot cope. This novel reveals much of Salander's back-story, and with it the roots of her anti-social personality. But as the plot is uncovered, and we, the readers, get deeper into what she already knows but never tells, and what others are trying desperately to either uncover or keep hidden, we discover that not only has she been let down by those who should protect her, but that her abuse has been deliberate, and condoned by powerful forces who control the Swedish state. Thus Larsson raises the basic question, one which had become more and more important in this country, of the dangers of a 'welfare' state turning into a nanny state, especially when, rather than working for the benefit of its citizens, a nanny state is easily manipulated for the benefit of the powerful few, and their apparatchicks, who would prefer it morph into an Orwellian security state.

Not that Larsson is didactic, at least not about those bigger themes. He can be woefully obsessive about the details of people's meals, or grocery purchases (Billy's Pan Pizzas may signify something deeper than a dish in Swedish society, but I have no idea what, and I got tired very quickly of reading about them), or how they eat (we don't need to be told that a bottle cap is removed before beer is drunk from the bottle). At one point Lisbeth herself says 'what you were drinking isn't important', and you feel sometimes that, had Larsson lived, he might have done some copy editing which would make the book flow more swiftly. One character, a champion boxer, seems to be introduced primarily as a plot device, but seeing the expert way Larsson wove material from the first novel into this one, I'm confident he will play a better role in the final volume of the trilogy, and accordingly I am willing to allow him his occasional longeurs. I'm impressed with Larsson's skill at plotting: he reveals the killer's identity much sooner than expected, perhaps removing some of the story's razor-edged ambiguity, but he still manages to keep the suspense going. He also can reference small items, like Salander's mother, whose condition in the first book is explained in the second, which also suggested the books are better read in order. This one contains story-lines, and characters, not least Salander's twin sister, which will obviously be continued, and hopefully resolved, in the trilogy's final volume. They also include the novel's most chilling villain, a psychologist whose role is only minor, but who has been set up carefully for a fall.

The other key element of Scandinavian crime fiction is the isolated nature of individuals within the societies, the personal space which they give each other, and to which an intrusive government seems intrinsically contrary. Hidden pasts play a huge part of this story, as they often do in crime fiction, but there are also things which the characters are hiding from each other, like Blomkvist's publishing partner, and lover, who is taking a job with a newspaper but can't bring herself to tell him. The relationship of Salander and Blomkvist plays on that, with the roles reversed from what one's expectations might be, and Blomkvist's egalitarian modern man irritates Salander, who proves far more traditional in her feelings that even she would expect.

Although they are not a Swedish Nick and Nora Charles, indeed, Larsson can keep them apart for virtually an entire novel, these books are very much about the relationship between the two. But as the titles suggest, Larsson's key character, his unique creation, is Salander. In fact, it struck me part way through this volume, that Salander, with her manipulation of computers, her hidden resources, her mysterious networks, and her awareness of things her enemies don't believe she could know, and her desire to redress old wrongs done to her by corrupt authority, resembles a classic figure of literature: The Count Of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes. And with that realisation, I recognised that Larsson's omniscient narration, his changes of point of view, his pace, are all very much in the Dumas tradition. And that I read this novel, and its predecessor, with much the same enthusiasm and involvement as I did when I first encountered Monte Cristo as a boy. That is not something one can say about many classics of modern crime writing, but it's why I don't hesitate to think of it as a classic.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
Maclehose Press/Quercus £16.99 ISBN 9781847245564

AN OPEN BOOK: DISCUSSING SCANDINAVIAN CRIME ON BBC RADIO FOUR

Sunday (11 Jan), I appeared on BBC Radio 4's programme Open Book, interviewed by host Mariella Frostrup (pictured right) about Scandinavian crime writers, in light of the BBC adaptations of Henning Mankell's Wallender stories, starring Kenneth Branagh (interesting choice, as Swedes tend to have lips, which Branagh doesn't--I'll write more about the shows when the DVD is released), and the publication of Stieg Larsson's Girl Who Played With Fire, and Yrsa Sigurdarsdottir's Last Rituals. You can find the programme online here.

It was a very busy show, so our ten minutes was edited down a bit, and the specific discussion of Larsson's book was what was lost, but we did pack in a lot of background on crime writing in the north, its roots in both British and American fiction, and the important influence of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck novels. And Mariella managed to query about specific Norwegians, so Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbo got name-checks.

It's a good listen, and our discussion goes well with Granta editor John Freeman talking about US Presidents and their reading: I once sold a review of Stephen Hunter to the Telegraph based on Bill Clinton being pictured with the book as Air Force One arrived in Britain. JFK, of course, put the James Bond novels on the map (and probably thought his CIA was just like that until he learned better) but they never mentioned that Ike's favourite reading was Zane Grey.

And before you ask, no, that's not me in the photo with Mariella.